Übercool Authoring Tools

The well-stocked Adobe TV has always been a great source for learning Adobe products. The new version that went live a couple of days back is packed with cool new features that you'll love. Here are some top ones:

• Customizable homepage
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• Share videos on social networking sites
• Subscribe to the RSS feeds of your favorite shows
• Pop-out video player to view videos at any size
• Commenting and rating
• Tags

Check out the latest on Adobe TV.

Posted by Nandini Gupta at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

At MAX next month, Adobe is putting together some sessions with snacks and drinks to get feedback on the new version of Community Help. Get a sneak preview. The new Community Help has an all new AIR interface and some exciting new features.

The sessions will be held at these times:
• Monday 10/5/09 11:30 am - 1 pm
• Tuesday 10/6/09 4:30 pm - 6 pm

Please contact tknoop@adobe.com if you think you can make either of these sessions at MAX and she'll send you more details.

Posted by Nandini Gupta at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Typically, when you create a multi-module course, you add a menu to support a user-driven learning path. When users can study the modules in any order or when a course has many modules, adding a visual clue to indicate user progress helps.

In Captivate 4, you can create a multi-module course that supports a user-driven learning path and also gives a visual clue (a checkmark) when a user completes a module by simply adding a TOC to the movie.

The steps to create a TOC are here.

If you are using a menu to create a multi-module course, check this article by Isaac Tabe. Isaac gives step-by-step instructions to show checkmarks on the menu slide of a multi-module Captivate movie based on user progress. The solution uses variables and advanced actions, a powerful way to add complex interactivity in your Captivate movie.

For more information on variables and advanced actions, see Captivate Help.

Posted by Nandini Gupta at 1:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Anyone who creates computer-based tutorials for a client knows the kind of effort that goes into applying a consistent style, in on-screen text as well as visuals. If you are using Captivate to create these tutorials, there are many ways you can reduce post-production editing time.

One of the least-known ways is perhaps the way to change the default captions added by Captivate for various actions you record.

Continue reading "Tips to reduce editing time for Captivate movies" »

Posted by Nandini Gupta at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Text to Speech is certainly one of the coolest features of Captivate 4. e-Learning course developers no longer need to budget for the time and cost of audio creation. This adds a new dimension to rapid authoring. And where individual users like trainers, managers, and software developers are concerned, they can now independently create a movie complete with audio.
All you need to do to generate the audio for a slide is add slide notes and select a voice. Captivate converts the slide notes into audio in seconds. If you want to generate audio for multiple slides in one go, you can use the Speech Management option.

Continue reading "Text to Speech Feature of Adobe Captivate" »

Posted by Nandini Gupta at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)